rich media info

MIT physicists have taken a step toward understanding the puzzling nature of high-temperature superconductors, materials that conduct electricity with no resistance at temperatures well above absolute zero.If superconductors could be made to work at temperatures as high as room temperature, they could have potentially limitless applications. But first, scientists need to learn much more about how such materials work.

Using a new method, the MIT team made a surprising discovery that may overturn theories about the state of matter in which superconducting materials exist just before they start to superconduct. The findings are reported in the February issue of Nature Physics.
Read More »

EBay has settled a seven-year patent dispute with MercExchange, a legal fight that prompted the Supreme Court to issue an important ruling on intellectual property.

EBay said Thursday that it had bought the three MercExchange patents it had been accused of violating. The price was not disclosed, but eBay said the figure would not materially affect its financial results.

MercExchange, based in Great Falls, Va., sued eBay in 2001, arguing that eBay’s “Buy It Now” option, which lets eBay sellers make items available at set prices instead of auctions, infringed MercExchange patents. MercExchange’s founder, a patent lawyer, Thomas Woolston, patented technologies related to an electronic network of consignment stores.
Read More »

A Virginia Tech student has created an LED floor lamp that is powered by gravity, using a weight slide similar to the concept of a grandfather clock. The lamp puts out the equivalent of a 40-Watt bulb, and lasts four hours per cycle. The mechanism is expected to last 200 years.

Read More »

We all know that Windows Vista consumes a lot of resources. It reduces your PC’s performances in terms of storage, memory and processor. Microsoft recommends 15GB of hard-disk space to install the OS. For some people that could be too much. A Croatian student, Dino Nuhagic wondered “Who can justify a 15GB operating system?” And he did something about it. Nuhagic developed a software called vLite that can strip Vista of useless components.

Read More »

The field of display technology has seen some impressive announcements recently, but this one tops the charts for this crew. The University of Washington has implemented microscopic manufacturing or self-assembly (capillary forces) to make a new kind of hybrid contact. This contact has a microscopic imprinted circuit with light emitting capabilities. This kind of breakthrough opens the door to a host a possible applications, including HUD overlays and immersive displays. Do not get too excited yet. There is also a patent filed under United States Patent 5682210 back in 1997, it is very similar in nature.

“Movie characters from the Terminator to the Bionic Woman use bionic eyes to zoom in on far-off scenes, have useful facts pop into their field of view, or create virtual crosshairs. Off the screen, virtual displays have been proposed for more practical purposes – visual aids to help vision-impaired people, holographic driving control panels and even as a way to surf the Web on the go.

The device to make this happen may be familiar. Engineers at the University of Washington have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.

Read More »